Tomorrow is the anniversary of dad’s burial. It will be a tough day for me. Ironically, it’s also his anniversary date for marrying his 2nd wife, the person who put him in that grave.

Let it be said that after this woman managed to take the family homestead away from my sister Meggie and transfer all of dad’s assets over to her own name by making the poor man who was in late stage Alzheimer’s sign papers he didn’t know he was signing, she loaded him up with Procrit, induced a stroke and let him lay there without medical care for three days hoping he would die. When he did not pass away, she and her nursing helper forced liquid down his throat causing aspirational pneumonia. Unfortunately for her, a neighbor who came to visit saw dad and called 9-1-1 and got him to the hospital.

I flew down immediately upon hearing the news. Once at the hospital, I had a feeding tube inserted and the moment I left to fly back to Keene, she had it removed. Six days later dad was dead after being starved to death at home. Her emails during those 6 days never talked of removing the feeding tube, only that his cheeks were rosy and he looked comfortable. When she called to tell me of his death, I was absolutely shocked. He had been improving at the hospital only 6 days before.

Dad’s cremains were delivered to my front door via the Post Office in what looked like a dented up cookie tin. I bought him a Navy urn and we buried him next to his parents. And this woman who used him and his money, this world traveler as she called herself, never even came to his funeral. Imagine not going to your husband’s funeral.

It took me months to learn the truth, to obtain the nursing notes and come to a conclusion about his death. I am still heartbroken that I didn’t see the writing on the wall. I was the only child who could have seen through my visits to Florida every four months. Why didn’t I see?

There is a lesson to be learned here; prepare for your old age while you are still young enough to have complete control of your mind. Write down exactly how you want things to be; exactly. And watch out what you wish for. Dad wanted Thanksgiving dinner with a woman he hadn’t seen since his Navy days in 1943. In the end, it was he who got served up.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 29th, 2008 at 10:47 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.